A Woman of Intelligence

by Karin Tanabe

  Then suddenly, she stopped laughing. Her mouth compressed to a line.

  She was now staring directly at me.

  And she looked scared.

  I felt the hairs on my arms bristle. Before I could turn around, a hand touched my shoulder. Gripped it.

  “Sit with me, would you?”

  CHAPTER 9

  “I’m sorry, but I was just going,” I said, my heart beginning to race as I pulled away from the man’s grip.

  “Could I walk with you, then?” he asked. I could feel the mother watching me, and was grateful. Who would bludgeon a woman in broad daylight with a mother and children close by?

  “You’re Katharina Edgeworth. I’m Lee Coldwell. And I want to talk to you about an old acquaintance of yours,” he said, his voice low but deliberate. “Jacob Gornev.”

  I stopped walking.

  There had been a time when the name Jacob Gornev would have put a very big smile on my face. But I had not seen Jacob in over a decade. Hearing his name shocked me into stillness.

  I studied the man in front of me. He was too clean-cut, too all-American to be a friend of Jacob’s. He had the kind of blond hair that had surely been nearly white as a child but had dulled in adulthood, and eyes that didn’t quite match, dark orbs in a serious face. His brown cap-toe shoes needed a good shine, but his tailored beige suit was presentable.

  “Could we sit?” the man asked. “My apologies if I frightened you.”

  “You terrified me,” I said. “How do you know who I am, how did you find me, and how do you know that I was acquainted with Jacob Gornev?” I meant to ask only one question at a time but three tumbled out.

  “I’ll explain,” he said, gesturing back to the benches. They were the same as the one I had shared with Carrie in Central Park, only these looked like they’d endured many more storms.

  “Nice day,” he said as we sat down.

  “Quite,” I replied. I was perched on the edge of the bench, ready to leap up if necessary.

  “Do me a favor,” he said as he leaned back, as relaxed as I was jumpy. “Smile and laugh so that woman over there stops staring as if I were about to put a gun to your temple.”

  “Are you sure you’re not?”

  “Absolutely,” he replied. In response, I smiled, though still warily.

  “Thank you,” he said. He fingered his hat, then removed it and put it in his lap.

  “You and Jacob Gornev were at Columbia together, yes? During the war. Between 1939 and 1941.”

  “Yes,” I replied, my mind racing. “I graduated in forty-two; Jacob the year before.”

  Lee Coldwell nodded. Then he reached into his suit pocket and took out a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes. He tapped one out and offered it to me. I declined with a shake of the head.

  He reached into his pocket again and removed a small box of matches. He lit one, lit his cigarette, then blew out the match. He then placed the used match back in his pocket.

  My body went rigid. The way his hat brim had been turned down when I first looked at him. The business with the match. This was not the first time I’d seen Lee Coldwell.

  “You were outside my apartment building. The man smoking in the rain,” I said, now truly shocked. “Were you there because of me?”

  “Sounds a bit like a movie title, doesn’t it,” he said calmly, looking at his cigarette. “The Man Smoking in the Rain. Bet it would be a hit.”

  “I need you to explain, immediately, why you’re following me, or I’m going right now to find the police,” I said, my fear multiplying with every word.

  “Good luck with that in Chinatown,” he said evenly. “The police may be just across the park, but they don’t come around here much.”

  I glanced at the woman, who had resumed playing rock soccer with her children, her momentary concern for me dispelled.

  “Look, let’s start again,” he said, sitting up a bit. “I’ve been doing this for ten years, and somehow it’s still rough. Mrs. Edgeworth,” he said, holding out his hand. He kept the cigarette between his teeth. “Mrs. Edgeworth, I’m Lee Coldwell, and I’m with the FBI. I followed you here, from Central Park, on your jog—you’re surprisingly fast—then in a taxi and again on foot, to this park, because I would very much like to talk to you about Jacob Gornev.”

  “What do you mean, you’re with the FBI?” I asked. Why would an FBI agent have any reason to stand below some housewife’s window in the dead of night?

  “Well,” he said. “I’m trying to find someone whom Jacob Gornev might like to see again after all these years. Someone he might like to talk to.”

  “Why? Did he do something?” I said, thinking back to a man I’d once been so fond of.

  Coldwell looked at me hard as he continued to puff on his cigarette. His stare made me even more uncomfortable than I already was.

  “I was wondering if you knew,” he said after a moment, “but you don’t.”

  “What don’t I know?”

  “Jacob Gornev is an intelligence operative for the Soviet Union. We think he reports directly to a very senior member of the KGB.”

  “Jacob Gornev?” I repeated, deeply skeptical. The Jacob Gornev I had known did Indian yoga. He could hold a cigar with his toes and smoke it. He was so beloved at the Dominican lunch counter near campus that they roasted a whole pig on a spit for his birthday. This same man worked for the KGB? A sworn enemy to this country? It was unfathomable.

  “Gornev is a Soviet spy. He was even when you were at Columbia. He’s moved up their chain of command since then. He interested us less when he was near the bottom. He interests us enormously now.”

  I nodded to mask my utter confusion. I knew Jacob was born in the Ukraine and had some leftist leanings, but many students at Columbia did. Some even attended Communist Party meetings. But Jacob was different. He’d never mentioned the Communist Party. Seemed in love with his life in New York. I’d assumed his political activity was quite mainstream. I would never have been involved with him if I’d thought otherwise.

  And I had been. Involved.

  “I see,” I said, more memories emerging from the folds of my mind. “Mr. Coldwell … I wish you luck with your endeavors, but I’m afraid you’re mistaken in thinking I can help you. There are many reasons why I’d be of no assistance, the first being that I haven’t seen Jacob Gornev since he graduated in 1941.” I pulled down the hem of my dress and crossed my legs away from Lee Coldwell. “Unless you’d like to know more about his university days?”

  “We know plenty about his university days,” Coldwell said, lighting another cigarette, going through his same ritual with the match. “We know as much as we can know about him from the outside. He works for a shipping company, United States Shipping Incorporated, which despite its deeply patriotic name, is a KGB front. And he dabbles in the restaurant business. Again, owned by the KGB. That’s enough to arrest him, but we want more before we do. So, what we need is someone—someone he likes and trusts—to have a conversation with him. A few conversations, if possible.”

  “A conversation.”

  “Yes,” he replied smoothly. “I was supposed to arrange a chance meeting with you, spend a few weeks getting to know you, and then, once you trusted me, ask you to help. That’s the usual protocol. But I’m telling you now, long before I should, that I think you’re the perfect person for the job.”

  The perfect person. The words rang false given the day’s events.

  “I can think of many reasons why I’m not,” I replied quietly. “Perfect, that is.”

  “The truth is,” said Coldwell, putting his hat back on. “We had a list of other people to approach. And you were not at the top of it. But after I watched you for a few days—apologies about that—you moved to the top.”

  I stared at Lee Coldwell, but the man I was thinking of was my husband. Even if I were interested in doing such a thing, Tom would never approve. Then again, after today, there could very well be divorce papers waiting, freshly inked, when I returned
home.

  “As I said, I haven’t spoken to Jacob in over a decade. I don’t think it would be easy for me to have a simple conversation.”

  “It might be easier than you think,” said Coldwell.

  “You seem to have a lot of things quite figured out,” I said, “which is lovely to know about American intelligence, but I still don’t think I can contribute. I’m sure there are dozens of people far more capable that you could approach—perhaps less abruptly than you did today.” I exhaled slowly. “I’m not sure that a housewife can do anything the FBI cannot.”

  Coldwell shook his head. “We’ve tried to get undercover agents near Gornev. For about a year we’ve tried, and no one has stuck. He’s involved with something new now and seems to have informants all over Washington, one of whom we know is working for the federal government. I’m sure there are others. We need someone to help us fish out the traitors.”

  This sounded like much more than a simple conversation. “And you think he’ll just, what, knock back a bit of vodka and tell me everything because we went on a few dates together?”

  Coldwell looked away from me. “Excuse my frankness, but it was more intimate than a few dates,” he said. “Or so I was told.”

  My embarrassment lit up my face.

  “Come,” he said, standing. “I’ll tell you more, but let’s take a walk. I don’t want to stay in one place longer than we already have. If you’re okay with it, take my arm and walk with me out of this park.”

  I hadn’t held a man’s arm in a long time, and it felt good, perhaps because I already felt indebted to him. He had taken my mind off the morning and my many failures.

  Jacob Gornev. We were indeed at Columbia together during the war. I was studying for my master’s degree in Italian, the only Swiss language I wasn’t yet fluent in. Jacob was studying for his degree in German. He was good-looking, with thick dark wavy hair and dark eyes, and enough charm to get many of the polyglots he carried on with into his bed. He liked to practice his German with me, since I was as comfortable in it as I was in English and French, and I liked to practice my Russian with him. Columbia required language students to choose a second one to study, and I had selected Russian, as I was already conversational. Mrs. Kuznetsov upstairs had loved to teach me, providing me with vocabulary and meals heavy on cabbage, all for free—before her tragic mishap with the ham, anyway.

  “I noticed the match,” I told Coldwell as we walked down Mosco Street. Around us, stores with their wares extended onto the sidewalk—toys, vegetables, cleaning supplies, dumplings and fish—many of them selling all those products at once.

  “That night in the rain,” I added. “You did the same thing with the match.”

  Coldwell nodded. “My father worked for the National Park Service. It rubbed off a bit,” he said. “I can barely throw anything away. I even eat orange rinds.”

  “Do you really?” I said, pausing on the sidewalk.

  “No. But I feel guilty that I don’t.”

  “How long have you been watching me?” I asked. I should have been asking about Jacob, but it suddenly dawned on me all the things this man could have seen. All the terrible incidents.

  “About a week,” he said quietly.

  I pulled my arm away from his and we fell silent again. Since becoming a mother, I had felt the world’s eyes on me, those judging stares. Now I realized that one of those sets of eyes belonged to this man. Lee Coldwell. Another person not helping.

  “Rough day today,” Coldwell said finally.

  “Wasn’t my best,” I replied, my gaze fixed on the sidewalk. “Why did you choose today, of all days, to speak to me, then?”

  “Today you’re alone,” Coldwell said plainly. “And you are a woman who is seldom alone. Or so it seems.”

  “To say the least.”

  “Besides,” he added. “I figured your day was already ruined. My approaching you could hardly make it much worse.”

  “I imagine an FBI agent might have seen much harder days,” I countered. I wasn’t looking for pity.

  Coldwell paused. “I’ve never been shat on by a child or a bird while on the job,” he said. “Pardon my language.”

  “There’s really no other way to say it,” I replied.

  He stopped in front of a small teahouse and gestured for us to go inside. It was loud; the intonations of a language I didn’t know always hit my ears differently than one I did. Without ceremony, we were seated at a plain Formica-topped table. Coldwell pointed to the table across from us and said, “That,” to our waiter, who nodded, and a few minutes later brought us plates of dumplings. I hadn’t had food like it, salty and comforting, since before I’d had children.

  Coldwell ate his dumplings quickly, then pushed the plate away, while I savored them, realizing that I hadn’t eaten a thing since breakfast.

  “So,” said Coldwell, picking up his ceramic cup of tea. “We’ve had our eyes on Gornev for a while, from a distance, but I see an opportunity right now that I want to seize.”

  “What kind of opportunity?” I asked, a wave of nausea rising.

  “Recently, he’s had a woman, an American, traveling to Washington for him. We think she’s been a courier of sorts.”

  “What is she couriering?”

  “I’ll get into that later,” Coldwell replied. “First I’ll give you the big picture.”

  I nodded and tried to concentrate on not inhaling my last four dumplings.

  “This woman, she’s been rubbing elbows—and who knows what else—with government moles, but she’s been tasked with something else by Gornev. And it’s something which, frankly, looks like it could end rather badly for her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it involves going to Moscow, which is never a good idea. But her expanded role also means that Gornev will have to replace her while she’s away. Probably with another woman.”

  “Why?” I asked, pushing my plate across the table. Coldwell signaled to the waiter to take it away.

  “Because he likes working with women. Probably thinks it’s less conspicuous. And his Washington people are now used to dealing with a woman.”

  “But why would Gornev ever pick me to replace this woman?” I asked, seeing where Coldwell’s logic was going. “I’m not a communist. I’m in fact married to a man whose father is a king of capitalism.”

  “I’m not saying he needs to pick you for anything,” he said, refilling my teacup. “I’m just asking, for now, if you would mind speaking to him. If it goes well, maybe he’ll want to speak to you a few more times. Maybe things will build from there.”

  “I’m not a communist,” I said again.

  “I’m aware.”

  “Then isn’t this fruitless?”

  Coldwell said nothing for a moment, taking a sip of his tea and tracing the pattern in the tabletop with his finger.

  “We heard he was in love with you.” Coldwell looked up at me and stopped moving his finger on the table.

  “Heard from whom?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

  “We heard, is all.”

  “I’d say he was fond of me,” I replied, choosing my words carefully. “That would be a fair statement.”

  “How is your Russian?”

  “It’s rusty. To say the least. Corroded. But it used to be quite good.”

  “You studied it for three years at Columbia, right?” His tone said that he already knew the answer.

  “I did, but I was already conversational when I arrived. I studied it as an undergraduate, and my upstairs neighbor when I was little, Mrs.—”

  “Mrs. Kuznetsov.”

  “Right, Mrs. Kuznetsov. I don’t even want to ask what else you know about my life,” I said.

  “Then I won’t tell you.”

  “She loved teaching me Russian,” I explained. “She was lonely, so she would often spend time with me when my mother worked. My mother was a translator. Just at home, but a very good one. She was useful during the war.”

 
“I bet.” He reached for his teacup but put it down when he realized it was empty. “And your aunt Hanna was also a translator,” he said. “An interpreter. During the Nuremberg trials.”

  “That’s right,” I said after a long pause.

  “If you were to help,” said Coldwell slowly, “if you see the threat against democracy, against America and the West the same way we do, then we’d put you in Jacob’s path. Not to approach him directly, but to have him run into you. Something that feels natural. Unlike what I did today.”

  Since 1950, and the start of the Korean War, the threat against our way of life by the Reds had dominated the papers and evening news. D-Day was barely behind us, and already there was a communist campaign to take over the world, with the Soviets leading the way, China right behind them. Did I see it as a threat to democracy? Of course. But it was complicated. I knew that much from nearly six years at the United Nations.

  “I would just, what then? Walk down the street and wait until he bumped into me?”

  “Not exactly. For one, you wouldn’t be alone when you ran into him,” he said. “We’d want you to be with someone, one of our men, someone who is undercover right now, and whom Gornev knows. He has no doubt that our agent is a communist. Passionate about the cause and all that. He would surely stop if he saw him. So, even if he didn’t recognize you right away, he’d recognize this man. But,” he said, pausing. “I think he’ll notice you first. You haven’t changed much in ten years.”

  When I’d looked in the mirror that morning, I saw nothing of the woman I was at Columbia. My hair was shorter, I was twenty pounds heavier, I looked and felt frazzled. I shook my head no. “I don’t—” I stopped, resting my hands on the Formica table. I had forgotten how comforting cheap, sturdy materials could be. They reminded me of my childhood, of my practical, dependable mother. “Thank you,” I replied instead. “So, what, Jacob sees me with a known communist, we talk, and then he invites me to spy on my country? But instead, I start spying on him?” I said.

  “There are probably a thousand more steps in the middle,” said Coldwell, “but we can set up your background to make you far more of a match than you look like right now.”